Famous Test Hills

Climbing steep hills has held a fascination for the motorist since the very early days, as shown by these articles from motoring magazines of the 1920s and 1930s. The links all open new windows with the articles as PDF files.

Famous British Test Hills

Famous Test Hills

Between July 1933 and May 1934, the “MG Magazine” (the precursor to “Safety Fast”) published a series of articles by H E Symons under the headline Famous British Test Hills. These were followed, in early 1935, by at least two articles titled Famous Test Hills and How To Climb Them. Roger Thomas included text, photographs, and diagrams from both series in his M.G. Trials Cars book but the scans below have been copied, with permission, from the Retro pages of the MMM Register website.

It’s fascinating to reflect that five out of the seven hills have been in almost continuous competitive use for most of the 75+ years since the articles were written. Honister has, of course, been tarmaced for years and Doverhay is one of those almost mythic hills with a reputation which far exceeds its actual use. It was used just once (1933) for cars on the Brighton-Beer and it was always a “motorcycles only” hill on the MCC Lands End Trial (1932 to 1957), the cars going up Grabhurst instead. It’s amazing how a few famous photographs, particularly if they’re of MGs, can distort a hill’s reputation.